Let's set the scene, shall we? It's four days after the World Trade Center attack. We're in the basement "backstage" of Chicago's Empty Bottle, attempting to crank through a hastily-rescheduled interview with Clinic, Liverpool's current favorite sons and the indie rock/post-punk icons du jour. The venue's doors have opened. The muffled but loud sounds of the opening band make their way through the floorboards. The overhead lights flicker every time someone uses the stairs. And we're huddled on a wobbly couch with vocalist Ade Blackburn. The only way to make certain we'll get an audible recording is to speak to only one member of the band -- though as we haven't explained this, we've probably just alienated and/or insulted the other members of the group (sorry guys!). And as we work our way tenuously through the interview, trying to hear Ade speak and trying to maintain a decent recording level, some dork from Pitchfork initiates a loud conversation directly behind us. Everything seems surreal in the wake of the week's events, but this is ridiculous...

To be fair, once the show begins and Clinic rip through their short but satisfying set, the evening's troubles are forgotten -- at least until weeks later, when it's time to piece the article together. To our shock, the recording of our interview is almost completely inaudible, and marred by bursts of ear-abrading static; it will take two hours and a whole lot of digital jiggery-pokery to put things right. We can, therefore, share Ade Blackburn's sentiments on gear that breaks down in the field... But we're getting ahead of ourselves...

Splendid: I'm guessing that this is the first show you've played since September 10th. Did you end up trapped on the east coast?

Ade Blackburn: Well, we played in Boston on Monday (the 10th), and we stayed over. We saw the news on Tuesday morning when we were about to drive back to New York to do our gigs there. Obviously, the gigs were canceled, so we've just been sort of stuck. With the police cordons, we haven't been able to go far too far. We were staying on the lower east side, and we had to show ID to get back to the hotel. It was kind of eerie, really.

Splendid: Obviously this wasn't the way you'd figured on launching a US tour.

Ade Blackburn: No, it's not something you ever dream of happening.

Splendid: Is it odd, or difficult, to be touring behind Internal Wrangler in 2001? I mean, here you are, still promoting material you recorded several years ago -- although it's still relatively new to US audiences. But some of these songs must be pretty old to you guys by now.

Ade Blackburn: I think that's sort of an ongoing dilemma for most bands. You have to accept that people want to hear songs that they're familiar with -- and that's doubly true now. The album came out last year in the UK. Because we've been working on new songs anyway, going back and doing older ones is kind of a break from that. It's not something where you have to think about how it's recorded, how it'll come together -- it already exists and it's enjoyable to play. It's a lot easier than actually writing or recording new stuff.

Splendid: You're used to playing to large crowds at this point. Have the smaller venues on this tour been a challenge for you, motivation-wise?

Ade Blackburn: No. The main thing that helps you to have the right kind of attitude or the right kind of enthusiasm is what kind of response you get (from the audience). Since we've been here we've done a couple of live radio sessions, and people have been really friendly and there's been a lot of interest in the gigs, so that overrides anything -- I'm really flattered by the interest we've had.

Splendid: There's certainly been a lot of grass-roots enthusiasm -- a lot of attention online, a lot of word of mouth in record shops and so forth.

Ade Blackburn: If things can work that way, it bypasses the whole corporate hard sell -- plowing loads of money into something. It seems like the most genuine way that people can get into the music you do, and the most satisfying way that something can come together.

Splendid: You're traveling light, equipment-wise, for this tour. How much did you have to compromise -- or rather, change -- the songs due to not being able to bring your full complement of gear to the US?

Ade Blackburn: Our sort of key "secret weapons" -- the keyboard, the melodica and the one sampler we use -- we've been able to bring all that stuff along. You always hire gear on these tours, and you expect it to break down, which keeps you on your toes.

Splendid: And of course, the surgical masks and surgeon's scrubs are an essential part of your image.

Ade Blackburn: Yeah.

Splendid: At the same time, they're rather contrary to the "selling points" of rock and roll, aren't they? I mean, you're never going to be larger-than-life personalities if you're only distinguishable by which instruments you play. I assume that's a conscious effort to stress the music over individual identity?

Ade Blackburn: In one way, I would say yes. The way I see a band is just as a way of making good music -- music that people want to listen to. So by us wearing surgeons' outfits, it takes the music away from being ego-based. It's just like "This is it, this is a unit that's making music." So no, I think it's really good that people just recognize it as that kind of image, and also the outfits keep us from being just four people wearing everyday streetclothes --

Splendid: Which would make it less of an experience.

Ade Blackburn: Right, it makes it more entertaining, more of an event. It keeps people guessing, makes them think. That's what I think should be a good night out. Not to consider that seems a bit lazy. Most bands maybe don't really care, and I think they should do.

Splendid: So on that basis, is there a solid goal you have for any and every Clinic performance? Something you want to leave the audience with, beyond basic entertainment?

Ade Blackburn: Well, for instance, with the reviews of the album that we've had so far, it's mentioned that it's not easy to pigeonhole it -- it's a mixture of ideas. I'd like people to leave not just thinking "I've just seen a punk band", or a this-or-that kind of band, or whatever, but something like "I can't quite place it in my mind, but it's something I want to hear again, and not something I've heard before."

Splendid: I'm surprised that it's taken so long for the record to be released here in the US -- especially given all the press attention it's had. I know, though, that Domino was in the process of "setting up shop" over here.

Ade Blackburn: Yeah, that's right.

Splendid: Did you turn down any offers from American labels? Were there offers to release the record here before now, or was it a wait and see thing?

Ade Blackburn: Going back to when we signed to Domino in Britain, we talked to a couple of labels then -- one of them was Matador, and we had the interest of Sub Pop, as that was about three years ago. Over the last three years there have been people interested in doing something, but the way we like to do things is not to dive in -- to be cautious, and to do things when we feel we're ready to do things. So this way of releasing the record, kind of easing ourselves into it with Domino, is kind of the ideal way to do it.

Splendid: I've talked to a lot of people who were surprised that Matador, or someone like that, didn't release the record a long time ago -- but I like the way you went about it. Along the same lines, have you been working on new material? Will there be new material in the set tonight?

Ade Blackburn: Yeah. There's be...I think three new songs in the set tonight. We've recorded a new album's worth of songs, which we did in April. That's going to be out next spring. I think that this time around, Domino will be able to release it here simultaneously with it coming out in Britain. I think that's pretty good, really, because it means there won't be people waiting around for three years to hear anything else from us. It gives you a more rounded picture of things, too, to hear whatever you're quite sooner. And again, that'll be on Domino. And we're not in a hurry to rush into anything else. I think if it works in this sense -- if you get into big things, like licensing, you immediately put more pressure on yourself because you're accepting advances, where as this way it's just an extension of what we do in Britain.

Splendid: I know you have your own label, too -- Aladdin's Cave of Golf. Have you been releasing stuff lately? I know you released the early Clinic singles, but have you put out anything by other bands? Are there other things coming out any time soon, or has it kind of taken a back seat to touring?

Ade Blackburn: There's a couple of bands in Liverpool -- there's one called Kling Klang, and a couple of other bands that we're kind of planning on doing something with. There aren't really many indie labels in Liverpool --

Splendid: You don't tend to hear about it like you hear about Manchester and other cities. And speaking of that, has your "emergence" kind of stimulated the scene and given more attention to other Liverpool bands? Or is it staying the same?

Ade Blackburn: I wouldn't put it down to what we've been doing; it tends to go in phases. Take five years ago in Liverpool, a lot of bands were going back to the sort of Beatles and Oasis kind of sound-alikes -- really bad. But in the last couple of years, there's been some really experimental things going on -- not just within guitar bands, but say, with dance music as well. Now, I think you've got more individual club nights, and just interesting bands, which we haven't had in ages in Liverpool -- maybe going back, even, to the eighties. A long time. There seems to be a bit more life in it recently.

Splendid: I imagine you get asked about this all the time, but... the Radiohead tour.

Ade Blackburn: Yeah.

Splendid: You were asked by the band to perform. How did the crowds respond to you? Those must have been huge exposure for you?

Ade Blackburn: Yeah, those were the biggest gigs we've ever done. As a whole, we got treated really well by the band, and their crew. (Something that sounds like a Merzbow song happens on our recording at this point, so the next ten seconds of Ade's reply are lost to the mists of time.) I mean, people didn't throw things at us, or heckle us; they knew the singles that we've done, so the response was... I was surprised. I suppose that you always think the worst, and expect people to be shouting at you, but it wasn't like that.

Splendid: And to be fair, your music must be fairly palatable to Radiohead fans; it's not as if you're, say, Garth Brooks opening for Radiohead.

Ade Blackburn: Yeah, or, like, Bon Jovi or something. I guess Radiohead's kind of audience is open to something that's a bit more challenging, or plays a bit more with what you can do with pop music. So I think that worked in our favor.

Splendid: So how did that affect your record sales? When you look at the track record for Radiohead's opening bands, it's pretty impressive -- definitely a stamp of approval, if you will. Did your record sales take off right away?

Ade Blackburn: Yeah, I'd say that right from when they asked us to do the gigs, things like that always get around. People always know about that stuff really soon. So right from that point, even before the gigs, people were talking about it and saying "Oh, you're playing with Radiohead." And I think that it really picked up from there. Their audience now is so massive -- if they recommend you, people actually take note.

Splendid: Yup. A recommendation from Thom Yorke goes a long way these days. He's like the Oprah of music; people will buy something blind if you put his name on a sticker and put it on the front.

Ade Blackburn: I think people really trust his tastes. I know that he mentioned us in a couple of magazines -- I think Spin at the end of last year, they mentioned our album in some of the things he'd been listening to. I think that had kind of a knock-on effect here in the US, too.

Splendid: So thanks to Thom Yorke, you've been able to quit your day jobs?

Ade Blackburn: Yeah, well, luckily, we hadn't been doing that -- we've just been able to do the band full time, since we signed to Domino we've started doing more and more things. So yeah, it's...every kind of six months or so, something different will happen that'll take you up a notch, which is quite exciting.

Splendid: Okay, there's one thing I have to know -- did you bring the psychedelic box?

Ade Blackburn: Uh, no. That was one thing we couldn't bring.

Splendid: Too bad -- I've always wanted to see it. I assume that, on the record, that extraterrestrial vibe, I assume that's kind of due to the box...?

Ade Blackburn: Yeah. What it is, is -- we got it from a shop that was... in Liverpool, over the river, there's a kind of obscure music shop. And the box was something that I think someone in the seventies, or maybe even earlier, had made, so it's like a home-made set of different effects... (As Ade speaks, the Merzbow song returns. Basically, he discusses the fact that the risk of moving and transporting the box outweighed the benefits of going on tour with it.) It's irreplaceable -- you need to be a bit cautious.

Splendid: Now, I remember that you had a group called Pure Morning, prior to Clinic. How did the transition happen? I've never heard any Pure Morning stuff, so I don't really know how easy or hard the transition from Pure Morning to Clinic was.

Ade Blackburn: We were doing that -- it was all sort of guitar based, and quite dischordant, maybe in a similar vein to things like Pavement and Sonic Youth... (Merzbow plays as Ade explains Pure Morning's desire to expand their sound and take more risks.) Once you get into doing that, it seems to really broaden things out, and made it a lot more original. I think it's a natural sort of progression -- you started listening to different things, developing more eclectic tastes, and breaking out of listening to just guitar-based music. I supposed that's the way it should always work, really -- you should always evolve.

Splendid: Now, you played All Tomorrow's Parties...this year?

Ade Blackburn: Last year. We played when Mogwai curated it.

Splendid: I heard that they'd approached you; you seem like the sort of band that could really do a great job of curating All Tomorrow's Parties. Did they talk to you about that? I'd read that they were talking to you about doing...not the next one, but the one after that.

Ade Blackburn: Yeah. I'm not too sure -- I mean, I know that the whole thing has sort of spread a bit -- there's one in the US now, right? (It hadn't been canceled yet at this point -- Ed.) I'd like to have a go at putting a bill together. I don't know whether anyone would want to go, but I'd do it.